Fiction Books

A gentle fancy for the Christmas Season—an oft-told tale with a wistful twistful of Something that left the Earth with a wing and a prayer.Earth was so far away that it wasn't visible. Even the sun was only a twinkle. But this vast distance did not mean that isolation could endure forever. Instruments within the ship intercepted radio broadcasts and, within the hour, early TV signals. Machines... more...

"Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?" "I've been to London, to see the Queen.""Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there?" "I caught a little mouse under the chair," Her mother said it three times. And each time the Baby Harriett laughed. The sound of her laugh was so funny that she laughed again at that; she kept on laughing, with shriller and shriller squeals.... more...

CHAPTER I. JUDAS The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of that period of the present century which we now call "Empire." Rain had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte, then declared Consul for... more...

A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log—only one, he declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the consumption of that four-foot stick.... more...

The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone and birch and willow, limp in the evening quiet, and the taste of smouldering leaves.... It wasn’t the Russian River. It was the Sacred Iss. The sun had touched the gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus and had vanished, leaving only the stillness... more...

CHAPTER I Stanbury Hill, remote but two hours' walk from a region blasted with mine and factory and furnace, shelters with its western slope a fair green valley, a land of meadows and orchard, untouched by poisonous breath. At its foot lies the village of Wanley. The opposite side of the hollow is clad with native wood, skirting for more than a mile the bank of a shallow stream, a tributary of the... more...

CHAPTER I. A MIDNIGHT SUMMONS "When did you last hear from Nayland Smith?" asked my visitor. I paused, my hand on the syphon, reflecting for a moment. "Two months ago," I said; "he's a poor correspondent and rather soured, I fancy." "What—a woman or something?" "Some affair of that sort. He's such a reticent beggar, I really know very little about... more...

Just before the close of the performances at Niblo's Garden, where the Jarrett combination was then playing, one evening in the latter part of June, 1862, two young men came out from the doorway of the theatre and took their course up Broadway toward the Houston Street corner. Any observer who might have caught a clear view of the faces of the two as they passed under one of the large lamps at the... more...

PREFACE. In the following work I have not attempted to mix Narrative and Science, believing that the mind once interested in the one, cannot with satisfaction pass abruptly to the other. The book is therefore divided into Two Parts: the first chiefly narrative, and the second chiefly scientific. In Part I. I have sought to convey some notion of the life of an Alpine explorer, and of the means by which... more...

Introduction I found myself in Twilight Land. How I ever got there I cannot tell, but there I was in Twilight Land. What is Twilight Land? It is a wonderful, wonderful place where no sun shines to scorch your back as you jog along the way, where no rain falls to make the road muddy and hard to travel, where no wind blows the dust into your eyes or the chill into your marrow. Where all is sweet and... more...